Fruit and Citrus Trees

Fruit Trees offer so many benefits to your outdoor space. Whether it’s the satisfaction of picking your own limes, lemons and oranges or the brilliant scent that permeates the surrounding air, these plants are true wonders, and easy to grow with this helpful guide.

Fruit Trees

We graft fruit varieties specially picked to produce great crops of great-tasting, juicy fruit onto a “rootstock” of another variety that is chosen because it will grow very well, but remain compact in size. Info on rootstocks is available on our product pages. “Dwarfing” rootstocks mean that anyone can grow their own fruit trees even in the smallest of gardens, or even on a small patio!

Fruit production is dependent on a few factors, such as the weather and pollination by insects. Some trees are self-fertile, whilst others will require a pollinator in order to produce fruit – see our website for details. As your trees establish your crops will improve. It is quite common for stone fruits such as plums, cherries and peaches to only produce flowers and fruit every two or three years.

Even if you have lots of flowers, you still need them to be pollinated by insects before the fruit can be produced. You can “cheat” by using an artist’s paintbrush to brush from flower to flower when they are produced in spring, mimicking a pollinating insect. You may just prefer to let nature take its course though.

Pruning in summer after the fruit has set will encourage more fruit growth the following year. If you want to encourage your tree to grow, the best time to prune is autumn/winter. It is advisable to prune stone fruits (such as plums, cherries, apricots and peaches) only when they are in leaf, to avoid a condition called “Silver Leaf”.

Fruit Trees & Bushes

Allow 2.5m (8ft) planting space between fruit trees for optimum growth and performance. If growing in limited space, you can prune to the size you need. Typically, allow smaller fruit bushes 1-1.5m of space. Specific height & spread info can be found on the product page on our website, or in our catalogue.

Fruit production is dependent on many factors, such as soil conditions, weather, the age of the tree and pollination by insects. As your plants establish over the coming years, your yields will improve.

When your plants start to produce flower buds, ensure to water them well and feed them with a high-potash feed such as our Blooming Fast Superior Soluble Feed.

Some fruit trees are self-fertile, whilst some require a pollinator plant nearby to produce fruit. Check the product page on our website for more info.

Most fruit trees and bushes will produce fruit every year – dependent on conditions. It is common for stone fruits to take a little longer than other trees to establish and these will typically produce flowers and fruit every two or three years.

Even if you have lots of flowers, you still need them to be pollinated by insects before fruit can be produced. You can help by using an artist’s paintbrush to brush pollen from flower to flower, mimicking a pollinating insect, or you may just prefer to let nature take its course.

We advise keeping the foliage of peaches and nectarines as dry as possible to avoid Leaf Curl, particularly in autumn and winter. Moving to a sheltered spot – a carport, garage, or greenhouse – is best.

Citrus Trees

Standard style Citrus trees, supplied in fully established in large pots and at least 3 years old. They are fine to be left in their pots if you cannot repot them straight away – just keep them warm and well watered. Grow them in large, well-drained pots, somewhere where there is little variance in temperature. The varieties we supply are hardier than you might imagine, but below -5°C these trees will die. In winter, move your trees to somewhere warmer – ideally somewhere with light, and above 10°C. If you can house them in your house (such as a conservatory), you will have the added benefit of glorious citrus fragrance filling the room when they are in flower, but take care with central heating, as this will dry them out considerably.

Water well and feed in summer with citrus feed, as they are sensitive to minor nutrient deficiencies – a bit like humans taking vitamin pills. They can be temperamental when the temperature, light or humidity changes rapidly and can shed a few leaves or fruitlets quickly. Do not worry, this is quite normal – they are robust trees and will recover.

Citrus trees are some of the only ones that produce flowers and fruit at the same time. Fruit can take a full 12 months from setting to harvest, so be patient. It is natural for plants to set a lot of fruitlets, many of which drop off. The plant will select the strongest few to sustain to harvest.

Citrus Tree Care Information

• Sweetly-fragranced flowers will appear all year round, especially in late winter. 
• The fruit ripens up to 12 months later – so plants are often in flower and fruiting at the same time.
• Citrus trees tend not to thrive in centrally heated homes. 
• From mid-June to late September, give plants a treat and transfer them outside to make the most of the available sunshine. 
• Remember they are not frost tolerant so will need bringing under cover if cold nights threaten.
• In summer, water freely – ideally with rainwater. 
• In winter you can reduce the amount – allowing the surface to partially dry out before watering again. Always allow excess water to drain away.
• Overwatering in winter is one of the commonest problems with citrus trees.
• Only minimal pruning is required to reshape or remove dead or damaged shoots.

Citrus Tree Top Tips

We recommend using our Soluble Citrus Fertiliser to ensure your trees grow into big and healthy specimens and most importantly, bear lots of juicy fruit!

For best results, bring your citrus trees indoors, to a cool area of the house over winter.

Feed with specialist feed every month during the spring and summer to help with growth – they are hungry fellows.

Citrus Problems and solutions

The problems associated with growing citrus are due to unsuitable growing conditions. Any one or several of these problems may occur:

• Failure to flower

• Flowers drop before fruit sets

• Yellowing of leaves

• Loss of leaves

• Fruit fall

• Rotting roots

Failure to flower - Lack of light, lack of feeding, erratic watering, or low temperatures can all cause this problem. If a citrus plant is grown from pips it will often not fruit for a number of years as they have to go through a juvenile stage before flowering. An average time for trees grown from seed to fruit is seven to ten years. Commercially, citrus are propagated by budding or grafting and can flower and fruit after only after two or three years.

Flowers fall before fruit sets - Dryness at the roots and lack of air humidity can cause failure to set fruit. Flowers do not need artificial pollinating.

Yellowing of leaves - There are several possibilities. The roots could be too wet or too dry. Draughts, low temperatures, or lack of feeding will also result in yellowing leaves.

Loss of leaves - This can be caused by draughts, too low or high temperatures in winter, often coupled with too much water in winter. Citrus prefer a cool winter rest. Provide lemons with a minimum winter night temperature of not less than 10°C and calamondin oranges with 13°C.

Fruit fall - Fruits should ripen in a period of warm sunny weather, taking almost a year to develop to full size. Most cultivars set too much fruit for the size of the plant. Some of these will be shed, or clusters should be thinned to one fruit each on young plants.

Rotting roots - The first sign may be leaf fall or yellowing often caused by overwatering. Cut away damaged roots with some of the compost and repot into a smaller container.

Preventing common issues

In order to keep your citrus plant in tip-top condition:

• Ensure that care is taken not to over water in winter.
• Do not pot on citrus into a container much larger than the root ball.
• Feed citrus with a proprietary citrus fertiliser. Use a high-nitrogen liquid feed from early spring to mid-summer.
• Change to a balanced feed from mid-summer to late autumn or early winter.
• Avoid wide fluctuations in temperature and stand citrus outside in the summer months.
• Increase humidity levels by placing pots in a saucer of damp gravel, expanded clay granules (Hydroleca) or recycled.
• lightweight aggregate (Hortag). The water shouldn’t reach the top, as this can make the compost in the pot too soggy.
• If some roots have rotted, keep the plant in a cool position, watering with care, in the hope that the plant may be able to make new root growth and recover. If in doubt as to the reason for a decline in growth and appearance, remove the plant from its pot and check the root condition. If roots are firm and healthy, then evaluate the plant’s situation and surroundings. If the roots are crowded, repot in spring.
• Citrus can also come under attack from pests such as scale insects, mealybug and red spider mite.
• Causes for leaf drop of a citrus tree
• The most common citrus leaf problems for lemon, lime and orange tree leaves is leaf drop. This can be caused by any number of reasons, but the most common is a great fluctuation in temperature, causing the leaves falling off a citrus tree to continue to drop until the tree can handle the temperature once more.

Citrus trees like warm weather but do best in temperatures that don’t go much above 60 to 65 degrees F. (15-18 C.) Further, whether you have your citrus trees indoors or out, you should make sure the temperature doesn’t fluctuate; that it is more of a constant temperature. This will definitely help stop leaves falling off a citrus tree.

Citrus leaf problems can also be caused by scale. Scale insects will cause orange, lime and lemon tree leaves to fall off the trees as well. These insects can be removed from the leaves of the citrus tree with a sharp knife. You can also use your fingernail or a cotton swab soaked in alcohol. If you find that there are too many insects to remove this way, you can spray the tree. Either spray the tree leaves with alcohol, or if you want to go a more natural route, use a mixture of lemon juice, garlic juice and cayenne pepper. Neem oil spray is effective too.

If, after checking the tree thoroughly, you find the leaves falling off a citrus tree in your home or yard, you should make sure the soil around the roots is wet enough. These trees like a lot of water and you need to water them thoroughly each time you water. Instead of just looking for signs of soil dryness, poke your finger into the soil so you can feel how damp the soil is beneath the surface.

Orange tree leaves and other citrus tree leaves are very prone to leaf drop and doing whatever you can to prevent your citrus tree leaves from dropping should definitely help your cause. If you do your best to prevent the major causes, you shouldn’t have too many problems with these hardy trees.

Shot holes (holes in leaves)

Please don’t be alarmed by these small holes in the leaves. These are caused by the recent hot weather.

Cherry trees will commonly respond to hot temperatures by developing ‘shot holes’, sometimes with a lighter ‘halo’ around them. The plant attempts to remove the damaged tissue by turning it woody. These woody spots then drop out of the leaf, leaving a hole and giving the appearance that someone has fired a shotgun at the leaf.

Please be assured that the holes are superficial and the plant itself is in good health. Don’t forget that the leaves will drop in the autumn, returning fresh next year. Please be aware shot hole is a condition and not a disease – the only implication of this condition being minor leaf imperfections.

White fertiliser residue

Do not be concerned if you see white residue on the leaves. The white substance on the leaves is fertiliser residue and will not affect the plant at all.

Many of our plants are fed/watered from above whilst in the greenhouses, so if the weather is particularly hot and sunny, the water can evaporate from leaves quickly, leaving this white cast. You’ll notice that it resembles a ‘splash’ pattern, or droplets.

A healthy dose of rain will wash it off. Alternatively, you can wipe the leaves with a damp cloth – but there’s really no need.

Fruit Tree FAQs

One of my trees has not grown/looks dead. What should I do?

By the end of May it should have started to grow. It’s most probable that the trees just need another few weeks to come out of dormancy. Please perform this BARK TEST to determine whether your tree is dead:

Scratch back a small section of the branch with a thumbnail or sharp knife. It comes away easily. If underneath it is green, the tree is fine, and just needs more time and warmer weather. If it is brown, the tree is dead at that point. Sometimes the tips of smaller branches will die back, but the tree is OK. If you find a brown branch, move closer to the main trunk and repeat, and check the trunk itself. If you find green lower down, prune back to where you find green, and it will shoot from there. If it is still brown, or the main trunk is brown, the tree is unfortunately dead.

It is perfectly normal for stone fruits (plum/apricot/cherry etc.) to take longer to burst back into life than other fruits like apples and pears; this is because they need warmer weather.

The leaves on my peach tree are deformed and discoloured. What has caused this/what can I do?

It is almost certain to be Peach Leaf Curl, which is caused by airborne bacteria (it has not come from us!). It affects peaches, causing the leaves to roll up with red/orange coloured blisters. It is prevalent in wet springs and the last few years we have had have been classics for it.

It is cosmetic, so will not kill the tree, but affected leaves will slow growth. Remove any affected leaves and destroy them. Keep your tree well-watered as they can use a lot of water – especially in warm breezy weather. Cover the tree with Bordeaux Mixture periodically throughout the year, to protect new buds that grow. The tree should be fine.

My Pear tree has lots of brown/orange spots on the leaves. What has caused this/what can I do?

A classic example of Pear Tree Rust – a fairly common fungal infection. The RHS’s website has lots of useful info on this infection available here.

It is rarely fatal to trees, though it can reduce fruit yield. What is unusual about Pear Rust is that the fungus attacks both Pears and Junipers. It actually needs both plants in order to complete its life cycle. Does the customer have infected Juniper conifers nearby?

It is advisable to remove and destroy infected leaves. There is also more advice on recommended control of the disease on the page above. The fungicide difenoconazole (Westland Plant Rescue Fungus Control concentrate) is labelled to control pear rust.